“I thought, ye see,” he explained, “as that there silly Bob ’ud very like be up to some tricks—makin’ believe to appear to ye, or some such thing—so, thinks I to myself, I’ll just bide handy in porch and if he do try it on I’ll pounce out on him.”
“Oh,” said Martha, “why I don’t suppose he knows naught about nothing of the kind.”
“Ye didn’t tell him your grandma’s tale, then?” said Sam, with a note of incredulous delight in his voice.
“N—no,” said Martha—“I didn’t reckon ’twould interes’ him, d’ye see. ’Twas different wi’ you.”
“Martha,” he said at last, “I take back all as I said agen this here old custom—I can see as there be sense in it. Ah, a deal o’ sense in it. My sperret, d’ye see, was very anxious to come to ’ee, Martha—that anxious that it did take the rest o’ me along wi’ it. I shouldn’t wonder if the rest of the tale was to come true too—about gettin’ married soon arter, ye know.”
“P’r’aps I’ll have summat to say about that,” tittered Martha coyly.
“Ye can’t say nothin’ but the one thing,” returned Sam triumphantly. “’Twouldn’t be lucky!”
Oh, dear, what can the matter be? Johnny’s so long at the Fair!
JOHNNY’S father was busily chopping wood in the little shed at the back of the cottage, and Johnny himself sat on an upturned block with one chubby leg crossed over the other—a feat of some difficulty when one’s legs are short and one’s seat unsteady—superintending the parental labours, and revolving a certain project in his mind. John the elder was a red-bearded giant of a man, with strongly marked features and great, sinewy, hairy arms, which were now fully revealed under his rolled up shirt-sleeves. Johnny the younger, like his namesake of poetic fame, had a golden head “like a yellow mop in blow,” a cherub-face, big solemn blue eyes—very serious and thoughtful just now—and every other good point which may reasonably be looked for in a healthy little peasant four-year-old.
[Picture: “You do seem to be choppin’ a lot this evenin’, Dada”]
He had not long been promoted to the dignity of knickerbockers, and was the proud possessor of pockets which still retained all the charm of novelty. Into one of these pockets he now dived from time to time, extracting from its depths (which were not very profound) a small round wooden box, the lid of which he proceeded to unscrew; a painful squeaking accompanying the process. This, on being removed, displayed a bright, threepenny-bit; and Johnny, taking it out, contemplated it for a moment in the broad palm of his grimy little hand, turned it over, polished it on the knee of his little breeches, replaced it in its receptacle, screwed on the lid again with laborious grinding, and finally restored the whole to his pocket.
